Watch: Matt Pine, Māori artist
This video is the last recording made with senior Māori artist Matt Pine a few months before his death in 2021.
Watch and read: Artist talks and interviews
Watch or read interviews with Aotearoa New Zealand artists – ranging from contemporary jewellers to sculptors, designers, painters, photographers, and more, talking about their works and methods.
Watch interviews with artists, photographers, and makers
Watch: Mataaho Collective discuss their monumental installation Takapau
Takapau is the centrepiece of Mataaho Collective’s show Te Puni Aroaro, a showcase the ever-changing nature of customary textile practices.
Watch: Raewyn Atkinson, clay artist
Raewyn Atkinson filmed ‘I too am in Paradise II’ over 10 months, recording the life cycle of an organic installation made in her Wellington garden.
Watch: Matthew McIntyre-Wilson, Māori artist
Hīnaki are skilfully made forms used as eel traps. They are baited and then placed in a river’s current, or weighted down on the riverbed where the eels enter the inverted openings and can’t escape. Wellington artist Matthew McIntyre-Wilson talks to Mātauranga Māori Curator Isaac Te Awa about learning from the hīnaki in our collection.
Watch: Natalie Robertson, Ngāti Porou photographer
Natalie Robertson describes the photographs in her series, ‘Tātara e maru ana – The sacred rain cape of Waiapu’ as visual documentation, but they’re also poetic and lyrical.
Watch: Dane Mitchell talks about ‘Iris, Iris, Iris’
Artist Dane Mitchell explains the role of the intriguing elements in his installation ‘Iris, Iris, Iris’.
Watch: Robin White – The making of ‘That Vase’
In 2019, Dame Robin White invited a small team from Te Papa to visit her on location in Lautoka Fiji as she completed That Vase, a masi (Fijian tapa) made with her collaborator Tamari Cabeikanacea.
Watch: Bill Culbert installing ‘Daylight flotsam Venice’ (2013) and ‘Drop’ (2013)
Artist Bill Culbert created 'Daylight flotsam Venice' (2013) and 'Drop' (2013) as part of his exhibition at the Venice Biennale, where he represented New Zealand in 2013. Here, he installs the work for their first exhibition in New Zealand at Te Papa.
Watch: Lisa Reihana: Wog Features
In in Pursuit of Venus [infected], Lisa Reihana uses costume carefully to construct the encounters between European and Pacific cultures. She has been exploring how costume creates character throughout her artistic career. One of the earliest examples is Wog Features (1990). Watch an excerpt here.
Watch: In conversation with fashion designer Lindah Lepou
Lindah Lepou talks about being a fa’faafine designer, her spirituality, and the evolution of Pacific and Māori couture.
Watch: Interviews with four New Zealand jewellers
Jewellers Lisa Walker, John Edgar, Warwick Freeman, and Alan Preston discuss their work and inspiration.
Watch: Interviews with Lisa Reihana
Lisa speaks about the meanings behind 'Lisa Reihana: Emissaries', the logistics of exhibiting, and making time-based digital art.
Watch: Tiffany Singh talks about Indra’s bow
“There’s a repositioning for me of bringing things out of the everyday and positioning them as something that’s very sacred.”
Watch: Tony Fomison at work
See rare footage of Tony Fomison at work, captured on glorious Super 8 by New Zealand experimental film-maker Martin Rumsby.
Read or listen to interviews
Standing on the shoulders of giants: Megan Dunn interviews Andrew McLeod
‘People don’t always know how to respond to art, they don’t know if they have to read the text or not.’
‘It’s before meaning’: Bill Culbert on ‘VOID’
Curator Sarah Farrar talks with Bill Culbert about his work VOID, 2006, made in collaboration with the late artist Ralph Hotere, and commissioned for Te Papa.
Gretchen Albrecht on her work ‘In a shower of gold’
Auckland-based painter Gretchen Albrecht talks about the process of creating her work ‘In a shower of gold’ (2011), and about how the history of her own work sustains her now.
‘Finales represent an end, and as such tend to be celebratory in tone’ – Nike Savvas on ‘Finale: Bouquet’
Nike Savvas talks to Curator Contemporary Art Nina Tonga about her work, Finale: Bouquet, on display in Toi Art until Jan 2020.
Art and wellbeing with Tiffany Singh, Ella Brewer, Catherine Spence, and Martin Awa Clarke Langdon
Panellists from science, health, education, and arts backgrounds explore how the relationship between the arts and health can offer diverse and dynamic settings for expressive restorative, educational, and therapeutic benefits.
